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JIM RUFFALOSurf Is Learning The Score*ANAHEIM — Sooner or later, you run out of excuses and just have to attend a soccer game. After all, you can walk your cat, sort out soup cans, and spray your philodendron only so many times.To most people, an invitation to attend a soccer game is usually met with the same amount of enthusiasm as greeted Louis Lepke's last request. Lepke, one of the founders of Murder Inc., was being strapped into Sing Sing’s electric chair and the warden asked the inevitable “Any last request?” _(SURF BEATS THOUSTONlN OVERTIME, D3)“Sure,” Lepke answered. “Sit on my lap.”On the excitement scale, soccer ranks right up there with selling Chesters.California Surf general manager Bill Dawson agrees, upto a point, that soccer can be a dull game.“It won’t be exciting if you knew nothing about the sport,” he said. That encompasses about 95 percent of the men, women and children in America.What about the five percent who do know something about the game? Even they complain that the low-scoring matches so prevalent in the sport make for a dull evening.“That’s the funny thing,” Dawson said. “We call a 2-1match dull, but a 14-7 football game is exciting. But each game had the same amount of scoring. I guess the answer is to make a soccer goal worth seven points.”That’s nice Bill, hut 0-0 matches, such as the regulation score in Wednesday night’s Surf-Houston match at the Big A, are as exciting as the current presidential campaigns.It’s not that the Surf didn't have chances to get the ball past Hurricanes goalie Paul Hammond. In fact, California had 19 chances, but still came up empty.That took the match into what NASL publicists drool ing-ly call “sudden death.”And yet, the 3,621 who crowded their way into the Big A Wednesday night were literally on the edge of their chairs.It’s precisely those 3,621 that Dawson is counting on to make the local franchise a success. He’s thrilled to seethat many people watching his team.One reason for his boundless joy is that practically every patron paid to get into the game. That’s a far cry from the early days of the local team.Last year they averaged 10,330 per match, and more than 11,000 the year before, but the size of those crowds was more a monument to creative bookkeeping than to the popularity of soccer.SEE RUFFALO, D9
Newspaper Details
Santa Ana Orange County Register Evening
Santa Ana, California, US
Thu, May 22, 1980
Page 48
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 13 May 2020
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